Self-interest can extend beyond immediate personal gain.
A person may care about family, colleagues, community, or institutions partly because those relationships have become part of how life is understood. This wider concern can support responsible action, but redefining everyone as part of the self risks erasing their separate needs and agency.
Ownership language has a similar tension. Saying "my project" can express commitment. It can also imply possession of work that depends on many people. Accountability is strongest when responsibility is clear and credit, authority, and consequences are shared honestly.
The useful question is not how large my selfishness can become. It is how a decision distributes benefit, burden, and voice across the people it affects.
For a consequential choice, I can ask:
- Whose interests are represented in my definition of success?
- Who bears a cost without having meaningful influence?
- Am I claiming collective benefit to justify a private preference?
- What obligation follows from the power I hold?
Not every decision can benefit everyone. Trade-offs and conflict remain. Expanding the circle of concern means making those trade-offs visible and treating other people as participants rather than extensions of my mission.
A broader sense of responsibility is valuable when it increases care and accountability. It becomes dangerous when it turns the world into another version of "mine."
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